Haven't seen you interviewed calmly for a while, or maybe I'm just traumatized by the intense gotcha interrogations you get. Either way it was amazing! Kind of nice to hear the ends of your sentences 😊
Finally my chance! On the Wall Street story- I had worked for those firms in a way from 2002-2006. I got Rolling Stone because I bought concert tickets and the only reason I kept it was Matt's writing on this in particular and I have been a fan ever since. I was "from the right" but I thought Matt was pretty spot on. My only complaint, if I had a chance to talk to Matt, was I wanted to tell him that when Hank Paulson said he didn't know Dick Fuld of Lehman, it was complete BS because I had been in at least five meetings with them and I was on the periphery (I didn't work for either), I could not have been in every meeting they had so it had to be more. So they did know each other. My other major takeaway is that Wall Street always gets a Christmas present from Congress that they paid for in campaign contributions. Also, many members of Congress at the time looked to cash in by leaving Congress and lobbying for Wall Street. Matt was always right about people getting screwed and Wall Street getting bailed out. The originally idea for TARP was to help homeowners and then they turned it into a Wall Street bailout. But the original idea was to buy and retire bad loans at a discount and bailout or mitigate the lenders and essentially refi the consumers into good loans. But they (Treasury/Admin) never really wanted to do that. They wanted to give Wall Street a Christmas present. Anyway, I could go on but I totally appreciate the work Matt did at this time.
Thank you for this snapshot of how Wall Street works and with the cooperation of the government, how compassionate and concerned they are about the welfare of their investors. Not.
It is funny, because I was in a position to witness a spectrum of folks and generally the firms not based in NY and involved more with individual investors were different than the NY based banks and investment banks. The folks not based in NY did seem to advocate for things that would benefit their customers like reducing the taxation of dividends for investors (I worked on this during my time). I won't bore you too much with the argument in favor of this, but it was good governance in my opinion because it created the incentive to pay dividends from profits rather than do buybacks and other things to inflate the stock price. It is an old school model where investors actually get an income stream. Anyway, the world has moved away from that in many ways and instead people chase the quick money and that is what you got with the mortgage meltdown. I was in a unique position because I worked in a mortgage office at one point in the 90s (and had other connections there) and understood mortgages, then I worked in the financial industry as I described and then moved to a real estate trade association in 2006. So I was advocating for the version of TARP where people got out of bad mortgages with the government help. That is what was sold to us and then Washington spent two seconds thinking about it and just decided it was best to just bail out Wall Street. It is hard for me not to curse here because it still boils my blood. But as I said, there were some good financial players out there who really weren't involved in this stuff so I don't want to paint with too broad a brush. But I will definitely say I fear another disaster because Wall Street and these relationships have only gotten worse (and have learned the wrong lesson) and the inversion is not complete, as almost all Democrats in DC have cozied up to Wall Street and Silicon Valley, too many Republicans remain cozy as well. So this is very much a part of the deep state/ruling class story we are all living today. It is very sad.
Thanks to Matt for his interview with author Christopher Leonard. It got me to read his "The Lords of Easy Money" (2022), a better book than "The Creature from Jeckyll Island"(1994) or "The Deficit Myth" (2020); still wondering how our Banking System Monopoly was allowed to run rampant over all of us.
What's your read on the explanation of 2008 related to Mark-To-Market accounting? I watched a TED talk once that attributed part of the problem to asset valuation rules, but I never knew whether it was a valid way to look at the event.
Yes, I think it played a huge role in the initial failures. I have long had big problems with various accounting rules and approaches. The problem with MTM is that it really does not allow for whether one must sell the asset at the time it is being valued. In other words something loses valuable but it is only notional at that point unless it is sold. It is sort of like when people feel poorer because their 401k went down. Yes, it went down, but do you have to sell or liquidate today? No is usually the answer so you haven't lost anything yet. The problem is that other things depend or are tied to those valuations. You see it all over the place- the amount of reserves required could be tied to such valuations. A payment or default could be triggered. If I remember correctly, that is what killed Lehman- once their mortgage portfolio was devalued, it had a cascading effect. I am trying to keep this simple- but the mortgages weren't all worthless, they maybe were ultimately worth 80 cents on the dollar but they were treated as if they were worth 20 cents at that moment, like the hurricane example (though I have issues with that example). That is why I thought my version of TARP could have worked- one could have bought up the bad mortgages for pennies on the dollar and refinanced them for consumers on very good terms and even perhaps made money. Most people could have kept their homes and it wouldn't have costed trillions. It would have taken time and a lot of work. Instead they bailed out Wall Street and created a hodgepodge of other programs that helped but took much longer and was much less efficient (and they set us up for trillion dollar deficits ever since but that is the next crisis). But yes, MTM can be a huge problem. And it is not as transparent as people say. One obvious example- Nvidia. Nvidia is not worth $3 trillion. But that is what the current market says it is worth. No one would buy it for that. Some day it might be worth that but not today, tomorrow, next week or next month. So say Nvidia borrows $100 billion on good terms from say Goldman Sachs. Goldman says you just have to pay interest for ten years and then the money is due or needs to be refinanced. BUT, there is a clause that if your market valuation drops below $1 trillion, the money is due within ten days (or pick your time). Whatever causes a drop to below $1 trillion probably means they don't have $100 billion to pay Goldman back and so they default and things cascade unless Goldman is willing to rework the deal. And that is what didn't really happen in 2008. Instead the vultures consumed the weak at taxpayer expense essentially.
I just started watching the interview. But I always forget that Emily and Ryan have a Friday show on Breaking Points. I haven't been able to get through a Krystal and Saagar segment in a long time.
Matt, we kind of came of age together, politically. I am almost always on the same page with you. But Gaza is not complicated. It’s genocide. I might understand if your calculation is that speaking up is going to make it harder to do your job. I understand if you feel that other people are just better at the story. But genocide and ethnic cleansing, live streamed, with a every spox simply lying outright is not complicated. And I am a bit with Roger Waters opinion on this; I won’t repeat the attack, but cannot hide my disappointment in your refusal to take a stand.
Why is criticism of Israel’s government and military always knee-jerkingly called antisemitism, or worse, Jew hate? So anyone criticizing Biden is guilty of hatred of America, or of Catholicism?
It’s about as sensible as Hillary’s dumbass “deplorables” comment.
I agree that it's genocide, but this post is moralistic, egotistical nonsense. It's perfectly fine to say you don't know enough about a topic to discuss it.
When did it become a genocide? Give a date or an event. Or was any attempt to rid the world of Hamas genocide? Was it genocide when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor or an act of war? When we dropped the bombs? The word is thrown around by unserious people who don't know what words mean.
Russia may have lost nearly a quarter of its civilian population in WWII, was that genocide? Germany itself lost half a million civilians, I think 20k died in the battle for Berlin. So, genocide?
The g word is not used because it corresponds to reality. It doesn’t. It’s used to strip Jews of their specialness and redistribute it to Palestinian Arab Muslims.
I don't know. Is it? If we had been getting live footage from Auschwitz and Treblinka, would it be ok to say "Gee, I don't have an opinion. It's complicated."? Or, an even more recent example; the images from Abu Ghraib. So, you see photos of torture in real time, but you know... "It's complicated."
And as for being egotistical - fuck you. As to being moralistic... thank you.
A dictionary definition of moralistic being: 'overfond of making moral judgements about others' behavior.' Your judgement that Matt should believe and express the same thing that you do is what others here are taking exception to.
You're not the first one to admonish Matt to "take a side" which always means "take my side." That's not only egotistical, it's arrogant as well.
With all due respect, comparing Auschwitz/Treblinka with Abu Ghraib misses the mark. Perhaps consider live footage of Isis beheadings. As to being moralistic - nice try.
I am going to pretend you are opposed to the mass slaughter of civilians- my point was the “it’s complicated” part of the equation. Government sponsored terror is not “complicated” whether it’s 17,000dead and 20,000 missing children or photos of men clearly being tortured. It’s not “complicated” - and to claim that it is is moral cowardice.
I am a huge fan and supporter of Matt. But I'm still puzzled about how he describes Putin. Putin got the oligarchs together and "made them pledge allegiance to HIM". I've read many of Putin's speeches and in my view, he loves Mother Russia. He is quite a patriot. In his speech to the UN in 2016, he said that Russia had learned from the USSR that spreading the communist doctrine was a fool's errand. Each country should decide for themselves. No more interest in empire. I always heard in that meeting that Putin told the oligarchs that they could keep their money, but it had to benefit Mother Russia. And by Mother Russia, he meant all the people. The oligarchs including himself could be wealthy but all had to bring the rest of Russia up out of poverty. He has succeeded in cutting poverty in half. So it's kind of like "Make Our Russia Great Again" MORGA! Trump isn't saying that our billionaires have to give up their money, but he wants a prosperous and independent America, not one dependent on other nations. I also heard Prof Stephen Cohen (Russian historian) who I also highly admired and met once, tell Tucker, I think, that Anna Politkovskaya was probably killed by the mafia which she was covering. Cohen knew her well and her family told him that is was not Putin. Now you may think this is a crock, but Cohen knew her well. So like Matt's conversion on the Covid story which is bigger even than 2008, I hope he takes another look on how a president needs to dig a country out of severe debt and deterioration because that's what is what's at stake here. And it's not always pretty.
Yes, yes, yes! Matt isn't always as objective in his reporting as I wish he were. Very subjective, very passionate and very funny (all why I love his writing). My ex was up to his nuts in mortgage industry shenanigans and Matt's assessment was spot on. Unlike Matt I was fired from my job in journalism for writing the truth about bunch of things including 2008. But as to Russia. . . Learning how to read Russian novelists in Russian isn't the same as being able to converse (and listen with real comprehension) on the street. Matt hung out with other expats or with Russians who spoke better English than he spoke Russian. The "exiles" were looking for adventure and apparently oblivious to the "natives" starving all round them, or they ridiculed them. They were deplorables—i.e., hopeless drunks, buffoons, ignoramuses, etc. This is where Matt's essential elitism (to which he admits colored his perception of Trump supporters for years) comes in. Well, anyway, sometimes "being there" actually hampers one's ability to see the big picture. I remain miserable on Jeff Sachs's account if indeed he did manage the theft of Russian assets by Western-sponsored oligarchs. I'm sure his idealism and passionate nature were the qualities that blinded him to reality there too. Like Matt, Sachs is perhaps too much the hopeless romantic. (I still prefer his "can't we all just get along?" geopolitics to Mearsheimer's relentless realism with respect to China.) I think Matt should reconsider the murder of the brave female journalist that made him despise Putin. I've always thought the Mafia did it. And also reconsider how relatively well Putin treated Navalny—a U.S. stooge (shades of Lee Harvey Oswald?)—again, in the context of what he (Putin) did for so many millions of ordinary people. If Matt spent time in Russia now he might be amazed at how much more cohesive its people are than we Americans are, in part owing to how we've been brainwashed in a way that's far more subtle than how the Russians were brainwashed in the Soviet era. Russians know when they're being lied to. Americans don't. Putin is a nationalist for a reason.
Wow, this is pretty brilliant (not that it has anything to do with agreeing with me)! It is a great reminder that just because you are there, doesn't mean you know it all. Yesterday Tucker interviewed Neil Oliver. Tucker talks about living in D.C. for 35 years and it took decades before he realized all the lies he believed. Nobody he knew made money their main motivator. So he couldn't see the corruption. Young guy in a bubble. Idealistic. But now he and Neil talk about "The Great Sorting" where we are now dividing by sheeple versus non-sheeple. Tucker was legitimately surprised by how "nice" Russia was on his recent visit. I had a client that worked on a movie in Russia in early nineties. The letters were not about clubbing. She was so devastated by the number of starving dogs in the streets that she paid $5000 to ship two dogs back to the states, as I recall. Humans might have been more difficult. For a very clear picture of the mayhem wreaked by Summers and Sachs et al. , read "How Harvard Lost Russia:
Sevender, Bonnie B., Cowgirl - I've never been to Russia at all, so does that make my assessment of Putin better than Matt's whose perhaps has been overly shaped from having been there too long to intimately? (A bit of sarcasm there.) That aside, from my perspective, Putin's beginnings and ascent through the hierarchy of state power has been in the KGB which greatly informs his character and conduct, and not for the better, either.
Putin might not be the personification of evil, but he can be totally and implacably brutal, ruthless, and duplicitous as he thinks the situation requires. Evidence of such would be: the polonium poisoning of Russian dissidents in the UK, a particularly cruel way to die; murders of journalists and political opponents in Russia and outside (Spain most recently); the convenient crash of an aircraft with an erstwhile cohort private army leader on board; brutal suppression of peaceful street protests; etc. Attributing some of the murders of Putin's opponents to the Russian Mafia isn't very convincing since the Russian Mafia is only an effective entity outside Russia. Inside Russia the Mafia can only exist and function with the sufferance of Putin and probably sometimes even does his dirty work.
As to Putin's patriotism, it can indeed be described as genuine and with the positive attributes of giving Russians a cohesiveness and sense of purpose. Exactly in the same way that Hitler gave the German people a sense of cohesiveness and purpose after the listlessness and disillusion of the Weimar republic. Some sources say that Putin has an overwhelming approval rating of about 85% of the Russian people. Understandable since the Russian populace are experiencing a degree of prosperity they never experienced in Soviet times and without the stifling bureaucracy of that era also. The other 15% who aren't content to keep their heads down and want something more--like a voice in the running of their country, aka, democracy--are SOL.
I disagreed with Matt above, and took a lot of shit for it - BUT the fact that Putin is currently looking like he’s the cowboy in the white hat is more a reflection of our current criminal leadership than it is a referendum on Putin’s own record. The guy is just as much a thug and murdered as any other world leader. Just because we currently own the bad guys doesn’t make Putin a good guy. The good guys get taken out, like Gordy, Sanders, Corbyn etc.
What? You didn't have to play "defending your life"? How boring. I frequently watch Counterpoints and Breaking Points. They're two of the more informative shows. Thank you for posting the interview.
we got to get along cause we ae al in this together...for the general good to all I hope. But free speach and the right to self expression must be the meme of the day.
I enjoyed the interview. I had never researched your past and found it to be interesting. Your analysis of subscribers' political leanings was, I feel, honest. I would classify myself as a conservative leaning libertarian, in the Ron Paul model. As you describe, I feel that most citizens aren't opposed to entertaining opinions different than their own. The "pounding over the head" with liberal rhetoric is tiresome and the catalyst that gave rise to Fox News et al. That in turn lead to the echo chambers and idealogical tribes we deal with today. Hopefully real and honest journalists, like yourself, will flourish and counter the unholy alliances of corporate money and legislators, that have brought this once great country to the brink of disaster.
Watched the whole thing and it was great! I truly enjoy the format that Breaking Points/Counter Points has with contributions from the left leaning and right leaning viewpoints.
To go to college in Soviet Russia without yet knowing the language... because you loved the beauty, irony and absurdist Russian humor of their great literature - a talent with language, music (and mathematics?) - there's a great memoir. A multi-generational gift with language, transformed.
Yes, Russia can console the soul - sort of like vodka, making everything seem fine, for a few moments.
Matt, your work with Walter is top notch. These interviews - and this is one of the better ones - are tedious to get through. IMHO, your best work is with Walter and other cutting public figures like the dynamic you had with Douglas Murray at the Munk Debates.
I dumped my paid subscription to breaking points when they went 100%for the Bari Weiss idiocy concerning Elon. I still think the twitter files was one of the biggest stories of my lifetime. And Bari needed off the bus for AIPAC. She found a mole hill to die on. It was like watching a fixed fight.
Aw thanks old man! But, I'll go with a trenta cold brew and a fat bowl of marijuana.
They really don't though, at all, ever. Particularly when the product being offered is an exchange of ideas. It's hard to think of a term capable of accurately describing how immature and vain a person must be to focus on someone else's appearance, a thing you have no control over, weren't asked about and is a matter of personal taste, rather than an amazing conversation.
Oh I'm an absolute asshole. But, it's just words so I think, if you call yourself an adult, you should be able to handle it. And BTW, I love how much it upsets you so thank you for boosting my day with a little bit of joy.
I don't get upset when you all try to insult me, I just engage with the substance of your argument. And I gotta tell ya, victory tastes sweet.
Haven't seen you interviewed calmly for a while, or maybe I'm just traumatized by the intense gotcha interrogations you get. Either way it was amazing! Kind of nice to hear the ends of your sentences 😊
YES! This, exactly! :)
I’d like my subscription fee to include at least one original photo of the Mongolian Dennis Rodman.
Why isn't everyone upvoting this??
Yeah, right down to the dyed hair! And a rebound champion to boot!
Finally my chance! On the Wall Street story- I had worked for those firms in a way from 2002-2006. I got Rolling Stone because I bought concert tickets and the only reason I kept it was Matt's writing on this in particular and I have been a fan ever since. I was "from the right" but I thought Matt was pretty spot on. My only complaint, if I had a chance to talk to Matt, was I wanted to tell him that when Hank Paulson said he didn't know Dick Fuld of Lehman, it was complete BS because I had been in at least five meetings with them and I was on the periphery (I didn't work for either), I could not have been in every meeting they had so it had to be more. So they did know each other. My other major takeaway is that Wall Street always gets a Christmas present from Congress that they paid for in campaign contributions. Also, many members of Congress at the time looked to cash in by leaving Congress and lobbying for Wall Street. Matt was always right about people getting screwed and Wall Street getting bailed out. The originally idea for TARP was to help homeowners and then they turned it into a Wall Street bailout. But the original idea was to buy and retire bad loans at a discount and bailout or mitigate the lenders and essentially refi the consumers into good loans. But they (Treasury/Admin) never really wanted to do that. They wanted to give Wall Street a Christmas present. Anyway, I could go on but I totally appreciate the work Matt did at this time.
Thank you for this snapshot of how Wall Street works and with the cooperation of the government, how compassionate and concerned they are about the welfare of their investors. Not.
It is funny, because I was in a position to witness a spectrum of folks and generally the firms not based in NY and involved more with individual investors were different than the NY based banks and investment banks. The folks not based in NY did seem to advocate for things that would benefit their customers like reducing the taxation of dividends for investors (I worked on this during my time). I won't bore you too much with the argument in favor of this, but it was good governance in my opinion because it created the incentive to pay dividends from profits rather than do buybacks and other things to inflate the stock price. It is an old school model where investors actually get an income stream. Anyway, the world has moved away from that in many ways and instead people chase the quick money and that is what you got with the mortgage meltdown. I was in a unique position because I worked in a mortgage office at one point in the 90s (and had other connections there) and understood mortgages, then I worked in the financial industry as I described and then moved to a real estate trade association in 2006. So I was advocating for the version of TARP where people got out of bad mortgages with the government help. That is what was sold to us and then Washington spent two seconds thinking about it and just decided it was best to just bail out Wall Street. It is hard for me not to curse here because it still boils my blood. But as I said, there were some good financial players out there who really weren't involved in this stuff so I don't want to paint with too broad a brush. But I will definitely say I fear another disaster because Wall Street and these relationships have only gotten worse (and have learned the wrong lesson) and the inversion is not complete, as almost all Democrats in DC have cozied up to Wall Street and Silicon Valley, too many Republicans remain cozy as well. So this is very much a part of the deep state/ruling class story we are all living today. It is very sad.
Thanks to Matt for his interview with author Christopher Leonard. It got me to read his "The Lords of Easy Money" (2022), a better book than "The Creature from Jeckyll Island"(1994) or "The Deficit Myth" (2020); still wondering how our Banking System Monopoly was allowed to run rampant over all of us.
ktrip, thanks for the memories. It's important for people who had eyes on the process to speak up.
What's your read on the explanation of 2008 related to Mark-To-Market accounting? I watched a TED talk once that attributed part of the problem to asset valuation rules, but I never knew whether it was a valid way to look at the event.
https://youtu.be/RrFSO62p0jk?feature=shared
Yes, I think it played a huge role in the initial failures. I have long had big problems with various accounting rules and approaches. The problem with MTM is that it really does not allow for whether one must sell the asset at the time it is being valued. In other words something loses valuable but it is only notional at that point unless it is sold. It is sort of like when people feel poorer because their 401k went down. Yes, it went down, but do you have to sell or liquidate today? No is usually the answer so you haven't lost anything yet. The problem is that other things depend or are tied to those valuations. You see it all over the place- the amount of reserves required could be tied to such valuations. A payment or default could be triggered. If I remember correctly, that is what killed Lehman- once their mortgage portfolio was devalued, it had a cascading effect. I am trying to keep this simple- but the mortgages weren't all worthless, they maybe were ultimately worth 80 cents on the dollar but they were treated as if they were worth 20 cents at that moment, like the hurricane example (though I have issues with that example). That is why I thought my version of TARP could have worked- one could have bought up the bad mortgages for pennies on the dollar and refinanced them for consumers on very good terms and even perhaps made money. Most people could have kept their homes and it wouldn't have costed trillions. It would have taken time and a lot of work. Instead they bailed out Wall Street and created a hodgepodge of other programs that helped but took much longer and was much less efficient (and they set us up for trillion dollar deficits ever since but that is the next crisis). But yes, MTM can be a huge problem. And it is not as transparent as people say. One obvious example- Nvidia. Nvidia is not worth $3 trillion. But that is what the current market says it is worth. No one would buy it for that. Some day it might be worth that but not today, tomorrow, next week or next month. So say Nvidia borrows $100 billion on good terms from say Goldman Sachs. Goldman says you just have to pay interest for ten years and then the money is due or needs to be refinanced. BUT, there is a clause that if your market valuation drops below $1 trillion, the money is due within ten days (or pick your time). Whatever causes a drop to below $1 trillion probably means they don't have $100 billion to pay Goldman back and so they default and things cascade unless Goldman is willing to rework the deal. And that is what didn't really happen in 2008. Instead the vultures consumed the weak at taxpayer expense essentially.
Watched the show last night and truly enjoyed it. You’ve had an amazing career. Keep it up. We need you.
I just started watching the interview. But I always forget that Emily and Ryan have a Friday show on Breaking Points. I haven't been able to get through a Krystal and Saagar segment in a long time.
I had to unsubscribe as well, but this interview was enjoyable.
Matt, we kind of came of age together, politically. I am almost always on the same page with you. But Gaza is not complicated. It’s genocide. I might understand if your calculation is that speaking up is going to make it harder to do your job. I understand if you feel that other people are just better at the story. But genocide and ethnic cleansing, live streamed, with a every spox simply lying outright is not complicated. And I am a bit with Roger Waters opinion on this; I won’t repeat the attack, but cannot hide my disappointment in your refusal to take a stand.
Genocide? Yeah, if you mean Hamas. Against non Jews in Gaza and Jews in Israel. I got your genocide right here.
You left wing nuts are so predictable. Antisemites nearly all.
Unhinged Jew hate. It always seems so logical to the Nazis. They’re still Nazis.
Why is criticism of Israel’s government and military always knee-jerkingly called antisemitism, or worse, Jew hate? So anyone criticizing Biden is guilty of hatred of America, or of Catholicism?
It’s about as sensible as Hillary’s dumbass “deplorables” comment.
Do you crave the taste of lies? Are they delicious pustules to you, to be popped and savored?
Please try to speak in understandable tones when talking with the adults.
I agree that it's genocide, but this post is moralistic, egotistical nonsense. It's perfectly fine to say you don't know enough about a topic to discuss it.
When did it become a genocide? Give a date or an event. Or was any attempt to rid the world of Hamas genocide? Was it genocide when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor or an act of war? When we dropped the bombs? The word is thrown around by unserious people who don't know what words mean.
Russia may have lost nearly a quarter of its civilian population in WWII, was that genocide? Germany itself lost half a million civilians, I think 20k died in the battle for Berlin. So, genocide?
The g word is not used because it corresponds to reality. It doesn’t. It’s used to strip Jews of their specialness and redistribute it to Palestinian Arab Muslims.
I don't know. Is it? If we had been getting live footage from Auschwitz and Treblinka, would it be ok to say "Gee, I don't have an opinion. It's complicated."? Or, an even more recent example; the images from Abu Ghraib. So, you see photos of torture in real time, but you know... "It's complicated."
And as for being egotistical - fuck you. As to being moralistic... thank you.
A dictionary definition of moralistic being: 'overfond of making moral judgements about others' behavior.' Your judgement that Matt should believe and express the same thing that you do is what others here are taking exception to.
You're not the first one to admonish Matt to "take a side" which always means "take my side." That's not only egotistical, it's arrogant as well.
Calm down
With all due respect, comparing Auschwitz/Treblinka with Abu Ghraib misses the mark. Perhaps consider live footage of Isis beheadings. As to being moralistic - nice try.
I am going to pretend you are opposed to the mass slaughter of civilians- my point was the “it’s complicated” part of the equation. Government sponsored terror is not “complicated” whether it’s 17,000dead and 20,000 missing children or photos of men clearly being tortured. It’s not “complicated” - and to claim that it is is moral cowardice.
Don't pretend. I am opposed to the mass slaughter of civilians. Your comparison sucked, thats all - I wish you well.
I am a huge fan and supporter of Matt. But I'm still puzzled about how he describes Putin. Putin got the oligarchs together and "made them pledge allegiance to HIM". I've read many of Putin's speeches and in my view, he loves Mother Russia. He is quite a patriot. In his speech to the UN in 2016, he said that Russia had learned from the USSR that spreading the communist doctrine was a fool's errand. Each country should decide for themselves. No more interest in empire. I always heard in that meeting that Putin told the oligarchs that they could keep their money, but it had to benefit Mother Russia. And by Mother Russia, he meant all the people. The oligarchs including himself could be wealthy but all had to bring the rest of Russia up out of poverty. He has succeeded in cutting poverty in half. So it's kind of like "Make Our Russia Great Again" MORGA! Trump isn't saying that our billionaires have to give up their money, but he wants a prosperous and independent America, not one dependent on other nations. I also heard Prof Stephen Cohen (Russian historian) who I also highly admired and met once, tell Tucker, I think, that Anna Politkovskaya was probably killed by the mafia which she was covering. Cohen knew her well and her family told him that is was not Putin. Now you may think this is a crock, but Cohen knew her well. So like Matt's conversion on the Covid story which is bigger even than 2008, I hope he takes another look on how a president needs to dig a country out of severe debt and deterioration because that's what is what's at stake here. And it's not always pretty.
Yes, yes, yes! Matt isn't always as objective in his reporting as I wish he were. Very subjective, very passionate and very funny (all why I love his writing). My ex was up to his nuts in mortgage industry shenanigans and Matt's assessment was spot on. Unlike Matt I was fired from my job in journalism for writing the truth about bunch of things including 2008. But as to Russia. . . Learning how to read Russian novelists in Russian isn't the same as being able to converse (and listen with real comprehension) on the street. Matt hung out with other expats or with Russians who spoke better English than he spoke Russian. The "exiles" were looking for adventure and apparently oblivious to the "natives" starving all round them, or they ridiculed them. They were deplorables—i.e., hopeless drunks, buffoons, ignoramuses, etc. This is where Matt's essential elitism (to which he admits colored his perception of Trump supporters for years) comes in. Well, anyway, sometimes "being there" actually hampers one's ability to see the big picture. I remain miserable on Jeff Sachs's account if indeed he did manage the theft of Russian assets by Western-sponsored oligarchs. I'm sure his idealism and passionate nature were the qualities that blinded him to reality there too. Like Matt, Sachs is perhaps too much the hopeless romantic. (I still prefer his "can't we all just get along?" geopolitics to Mearsheimer's relentless realism with respect to China.) I think Matt should reconsider the murder of the brave female journalist that made him despise Putin. I've always thought the Mafia did it. And also reconsider how relatively well Putin treated Navalny—a U.S. stooge (shades of Lee Harvey Oswald?)—again, in the context of what he (Putin) did for so many millions of ordinary people. If Matt spent time in Russia now he might be amazed at how much more cohesive its people are than we Americans are, in part owing to how we've been brainwashed in a way that's far more subtle than how the Russians were brainwashed in the Soviet era. Russians know when they're being lied to. Americans don't. Putin is a nationalist for a reason.
Wow, this is pretty brilliant (not that it has anything to do with agreeing with me)! It is a great reminder that just because you are there, doesn't mean you know it all. Yesterday Tucker interviewed Neil Oliver. Tucker talks about living in D.C. for 35 years and it took decades before he realized all the lies he believed. Nobody he knew made money their main motivator. So he couldn't see the corruption. Young guy in a bubble. Idealistic. But now he and Neil talk about "The Great Sorting" where we are now dividing by sheeple versus non-sheeple. Tucker was legitimately surprised by how "nice" Russia was on his recent visit. I had a client that worked on a movie in Russia in early nineties. The letters were not about clubbing. She was so devastated by the number of starving dogs in the streets that she paid $5000 to ship two dogs back to the states, as I recall. Humans might have been more difficult. For a very clear picture of the mayhem wreaked by Summers and Sachs et al. , read "How Harvard Lost Russia:
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2btfpiwkwid6fq6qrokcg/home/how-harvard-lost-russia
Sevender, Bonnie B., Cowgirl - I've never been to Russia at all, so does that make my assessment of Putin better than Matt's whose perhaps has been overly shaped from having been there too long to intimately? (A bit of sarcasm there.) That aside, from my perspective, Putin's beginnings and ascent through the hierarchy of state power has been in the KGB which greatly informs his character and conduct, and not for the better, either.
Putin might not be the personification of evil, but he can be totally and implacably brutal, ruthless, and duplicitous as he thinks the situation requires. Evidence of such would be: the polonium poisoning of Russian dissidents in the UK, a particularly cruel way to die; murders of journalists and political opponents in Russia and outside (Spain most recently); the convenient crash of an aircraft with an erstwhile cohort private army leader on board; brutal suppression of peaceful street protests; etc. Attributing some of the murders of Putin's opponents to the Russian Mafia isn't very convincing since the Russian Mafia is only an effective entity outside Russia. Inside Russia the Mafia can only exist and function with the sufferance of Putin and probably sometimes even does his dirty work.
As to Putin's patriotism, it can indeed be described as genuine and with the positive attributes of giving Russians a cohesiveness and sense of purpose. Exactly in the same way that Hitler gave the German people a sense of cohesiveness and purpose after the listlessness and disillusion of the Weimar republic. Some sources say that Putin has an overwhelming approval rating of about 85% of the Russian people. Understandable since the Russian populace are experiencing a degree of prosperity they never experienced in Soviet times and without the stifling bureaucracy of that era also. The other 15% who aren't content to keep their heads down and want something more--like a voice in the running of their country, aka, democracy--are SOL.
Thanks for the link. When I heard that comment about Sachs helping create the post soviet oligarchs, I figured I needed to learn more about him.
I’ve always thought Matt’s view of Putin was overly shaped by his early years.
I disagreed with Matt above, and took a lot of shit for it - BUT the fact that Putin is currently looking like he’s the cowboy in the white hat is more a reflection of our current criminal leadership than it is a referendum on Putin’s own record. The guy is just as much a thug and murdered as any other world leader. Just because we currently own the bad guys doesn’t make Putin a good guy. The good guys get taken out, like Gordy, Sanders, Corbyn etc.
What? You didn't have to play "defending your life"? How boring. I frequently watch Counterpoints and Breaking Points. They're two of the more informative shows. Thank you for posting the interview.
Breaking Points informative. 😂😂😂
More informative than trying to watch any of the networks.
Informative? Yeah, maybe for it's first 6 months, but it's devolved into the usual hackery, nearly all from Ball. She's never left the DNC cult.
So? I have pizza dough rising it and watching it beats any network news show.
Fair enough, but if I'm trying to get a handle on what's going on in the world, Breaking Points is more informative than your pizza dough.
Have you tried his pizza dough? Gluten free, ethically raised. Can't beat it!
and it goes well with KJP and MSNBC word salads.
Clever
we got to get along cause we ae al in this together...for the general good to all I hope. But free speach and the right to self expression must be the meme of the day.
I enjoyed the interview. I had never researched your past and found it to be interesting. Your analysis of subscribers' political leanings was, I feel, honest. I would classify myself as a conservative leaning libertarian, in the Ron Paul model. As you describe, I feel that most citizens aren't opposed to entertaining opinions different than their own. The "pounding over the head" with liberal rhetoric is tiresome and the catalyst that gave rise to Fox News et al. That in turn lead to the echo chambers and idealogical tribes we deal with today. Hopefully real and honest journalists, like yourself, will flourish and counter the unholy alliances of corporate money and legislators, that have brought this once great country to the brink of disaster.
So is this show just a renamed version of the one Saagar and Kyle's mom created?
Hey man, Kyle's mom is a nice lady!
Also yes, but Emily and Ryan are so much more laid back. Usually.
Cartman thinks Kyle's mom is a beeeyyaatch. Ah.
I believe Counter Points is the Friday edition of Breaking Points.
Watched the whole thing and it was great! I truly enjoy the format that Breaking Points/Counter Points has with contributions from the left leaning and right leaning viewpoints.
To go to college in Soviet Russia without yet knowing the language... because you loved the beauty, irony and absurdist Russian humor of their great literature - a talent with language, music (and mathematics?) - there's a great memoir. A multi-generational gift with language, transformed.
Yes, Russia can console the soul - sort of like vodka, making everything seem fine, for a few moments.
"Why do you always wear black, Masha?"
"I'm in mourning for my life."
For centuries, a landlocked nation.
Matt, your work with Walter is top notch. These interviews - and this is one of the better ones - are tedious to get through. IMHO, your best work is with Walter and other cutting public figures like the dynamic you had with Douglas Murray at the Munk Debates.
I blame the two “hosts”. It is not Matt.
For sure. The format and personalities on BP are iffy at best.
I dumped my paid subscription to breaking points when they went 100%for the Bari Weiss idiocy concerning Elon. I still think the twitter files was one of the biggest stories of my lifetime. And Bari needed off the bus for AIPAC. She found a mole hill to die on. It was like watching a fixed fight.
Matt, you have a good round/sphericalish head. Shave it, don't just use the closest clipper attachment. Shave it. Will be a much better look.
Grow up and worry about things that matter
Take two aspirin and call me in the morning. Looks matter, junior. Particularly when you are on a video program. Else your image is distracting.
Or just don't read my comments. What a suck up you are.
Aw thanks old man! But, I'll go with a trenta cold brew and a fat bowl of marijuana.
They really don't though, at all, ever. Particularly when the product being offered is an exchange of ideas. It's hard to think of a term capable of accurately describing how immature and vain a person must be to focus on someone else's appearance, a thing you have no control over, weren't asked about and is a matter of personal taste, rather than an amazing conversation.
Wait, who am I sucking up to?
Jesus, you’re a real douche. Read some of your comments sometime. You are faux intelligent.
I am convinced that boy actually masturbated during the video.
Odd that your thoughts went, completely unprompted, to my dick. BUT if you must know, I'm actually using you as my mental masturbation toy 😉
Oh I'm an absolute asshole. But, it's just words so I think, if you call yourself an adult, you should be able to handle it. And BTW, I love how much it upsets you so thank you for boosting my day with a little bit of joy.
I don't get upset when you all try to insult me, I just engage with the substance of your argument. And I gotta tell ya, victory tastes sweet.
Hey Mom! I won an argument on the internet today! It was so awesome! Can you bring me down some more nacho cheese Doritos?